


Sick Boy Soldier

by elea92



Category: Palaye Royale (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, Gen, Gore, Songfic, palaye royale - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:36:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22577173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elea92/pseuds/elea92
Summary: There once was a boy named Jimmy, who dreamt of pirate ships, and loved hearing his mother whistling to make him sleep.Now there is a sick boy soldier, who doesn't know who he is and who doesn't think that matter, because the war has taken everything and leaves blood and death in its place.Inspired by Palaye Royale's song - Sick Boy Soldier
Kudos: 5





	Sick Boy Soldier

When Jimmy lived at home, with his mother, he used to dream of adventures. He’d stay awake late at night, imagining epic tales of piracy. He never quite knew if he wanted to be the big mean pirate, with a ragged sword and crooked smile, leading his ship to unknown lands and forgotten treasures, or the nice captain, appointed by the king to rid the ocean of all the criminals, with a beautiful coat and a tricorn on his head, and people calling him sir with respect in their eyes. It was alright though, because he could change the story every night, to fit his mood. In the morning, when his mother came to wake him up, Jimmy would tell her of the story of the last evening. He would spare her the grimy details, because he didn’t want to shock her. She would smile sweetly, ask a few questions, before making him come down for breakfast.

Now, buried so deep inside the mud, he doesn’t even know if he’s breathing air or dirt, the boy soldier doesn’t dream of pirates and adventures anymore. When he thinks of ships, they are armoured and dangerous. They lurk under the water, waiting for their prey. There is no man on the deck, looking at the horizon in pretty costumes. Everyone is buried under the metal just like he is. He doesn’t even dream much of those ships either. He doesn’t dream much at all. There’s no dreaming in a place like this, when you sleep with your shoes on, because you can’t detach your bruised skin from the rotten leather anyway. There’s sickness in every breath, your clothes smell of death, and you’re scared the rats will start eating you up if you stay unconscious too long.

When the war started, and when he was called to arms, Jimmy felt for the first time that he was going to take part in something greater than himself. When he received his uniform and his train ticket, he felt like an adult, he felt like a man. For once, he wasn’t just Jimmy, the boy from a little country town, who the other kids used to laugh at because he didn’t know his father. Jimmy the son who would become a worker at the factory in the big city nearby, find a pretty girl there, marry and settle down. He would become Jimmy the war hero. He would save the world. He would make his mother proud. That’s what he told her, times and times again, when she started crying at night in the few weeks before his departure.

The boy soldier knew now he never was no man. In fact, in the midst of the chaos, his ears pierced by the deafening sounds of explosions and the wailing cries of injured men, he never felt more like a kid. There was no one to kiss his cuts away, there was just the nauseating scent of blood. Bandage it away quick, before the mud gets inside the wound and you die. Before the rats smell the blood and start to attack. He wasn’t a hero. Sometimes, when he was sharing a cigarette with a partner bound to die struck by shell debris the very next day, they would even start wondering if they were on the right side of this damned war. He didn’t know if he was the pirate or the royal governor, he didn’t know if any of them were right in the first place, because the sea was made of corpses and terrible machines of destruction. Because there were severed limbs sticking out from the soil sometimes and he didn’t even flinch anymore when a fellow who had just arrived, just as much a kid as he was, with wide and teary eyes and trembling hands, would suddenly crumple down on the field, struck by a bullet which had taken away his right eye. A man would understand what was going on, he thought. But to him, it all felt pointless.

Inside the little country town, there is a mother who cries every night thinking of her Jimmy. She hopes he is doing fine out there. She hopes he is alive. When winter comes, and the fields are covered in snow, she hopes he isn’t freezing in his sleep. She wished she knew how to write well enough to write letters. She wants to tell him stories of pirates and beautiful ships, like when he was a boy. When he had a fever, she used to tell him stories, and she held him through the night. She never had a beautiful voice, so instead of singing she used to whistle to him to the tune of old lullabies. When she ran out of lullabies to whistle, she would move on to other songs, songs of her youth, songs she remembers from when Jimmy’s father was still around and he would sing them all to her because he had a beautiful voice and he knew all the words. She wishes she could go outside, and whistle in the night, so the wind could take the whistle away and bring it to her boy, so so far away. She hopes she’ll see his smile again. When she opens the door to his room, she remembers the boy who used to sleep so soundly in the bed and she lets the tears fall. Sometimes, she hears news of what’s going on, over there, in the trenches, and she can’t sleep anymore. She wakes up sweating, wrenched from nightmares with the name of her son still on her lips. But this is no nightmare to wake up from because the house is still empty and there is no way of knowing where the little boy who dreamt of pirates is now. So she calls, _Jimmy!_ , and she cries again. There’s nothing to do but cry and hope.

If the boy soldier had known of the woman crying, he would have told her there was nothing to cry about. No one to cry about. He would tell her not to get lost in her feelings, because her feeling ain’t right. After months inside the insanity of the war, he’s lost everything he maybe once was. He has no name, no story, no place to go back to, no family. None of it feels real anymore. There is nothing real in this world, nothing but the slosh made on the ground by the snow, the blood and the dirt, nothing but the horrifying sounds, and the flashes of light. There are no people, just nameless faces. You can’t remember names, because then it hurts when you see them fall to the ground. They are just uniforms, dirty and torn, face down in the dirt never to get back up again. There is no reason to write letters, because they probably would never make it to the soldiers, lost somewhere in the apocalypse, crumpled and drenched in dirty water. Nobody wants to read letters anyway, because they tell of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, a world without the hunger and the pain. A world where things happen for a reason, and you don’t give grenades to a kid before telling him to run straight to the enemy.

With the winter, the boy soldier has gone sick. He’s developed a bad cough. Now when he wakes up, his clothes are often half frozen and he can feel the harsh ice brushing against his protruding ribs. He doesn’t shiver anymore, or maybe he shivers all the time. He doesn’t know how he is still able of holding his gun, or why he hasn’t been killed yet. Maybe he has. Maybe his body lies in a pit somewhere. But then another cough wreaks his body and drops of blood escape from his mouth. So, he’s alive then. Not for long anymore, but still. He knows the sickness will take him, even if the bullets don’t. They have poisonous gas now, he learnt. The soldiers have received masks to protect their airways from the yellowish mist. He doesn't know what the gas is supposed to do, but the ones who have been exposed scream so loud he doesn't really want an answer anyway. It attacks the skin, the eyes, the mouth. It penetrates the body and leaves everything in debilitating agony. Maybe some of it has already found his way inside his brain, and that’s why he doesn’t remember his name, doesn’t remember anything but the terror. That’s why he doesn’t even want to ask questions, to understand anymore. The fear runs so deep inside his bones that like his shoes clinging to his feet, he thinks he probably couldn’t take it away without ripping himself apart.

It's the dead of night. No one is fighting at this hour. People try to sleep. You can still hear the scurrying of rodents underneath you. The sick boy soldier feels dizzy and he progressively looses his grasp on reality. Somewhere deep inside his mind, he knows he won’t wake up to see another day of fighting. He won’t hear another cry, won’t see another shell explode, won’t smell the smoke again. He doesn’t think of anyone who could regret him. There is no one to think of. He is no one at all. Whoever he once was could never die, because it just disappeared, whisked away by an explosion, drowned in the mud. He’s just a sick boy soldier, one amidst them all. Maybe once his name was Jimmy, and maybe once he had a mother in a little country town, and he dreamt of pirates and ships. But again, maybe Jimmy was that kid they took away on a gurney because a rat had gnawed at his eye whilst he slept. Maybe Jimmy was the boy snoring next to him, wrapped around himself in a desperate attempt to protect himself from the cold. Maybe Jimmy is one of the thousand of corpses that have been thrown away in ditches and burnt, because there was simply no room to put them all in graves. Maybe Jimmy would come back to his mother one day, if all this insanity ever ended. Another fit of coughing leaves the sick boy soldier breathless. His vision is blurry now, he feels the darkness taking him away.

In the quiet of the night, as the fever slowly eats at his brain, the wind seems to carry the faintest tune, like a mother whistling an old song.

> It gets cold in the winter sometimes  
> I get lost when the feeling ain’t right  
> And Mother can’t sleep at night  
> She gets lost in the feeling  
> But her feeling ain’t right.
> 
> \- Palaye Royale


End file.
